Re: Depends...
Scott --
I'm not sure what you mean by "require". You might well mean that you encountered some problem and found that technique to get around it. But that begs the question of whether there aren't other, better fixes. (If you're going to run Debian-unstable, you'd better be prepared to deal with breakage. I personally just don't go there.)
In any event, it's always my preference to not cause apt-get to attempt huge jumps in package versions, so as to minimise the likelihood of upgrade glitches, but that doesn't require getting huge numbers of packages from multiple branches. I would tend to proceed as follows:
Install the bare minimum Debian-stable system, e.g., by quitting the installer at the package-selection stage. Then:
apt-get update
apt-get install perl libc6 dpkg apt apt-utils debconf
apt-get dist-upgrade
This will upgrade only a modest number of packages to the latest Debian-stable versions, upgrading the most-crucial packages first.
Now, change /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Debian-testing trees. Again:
apt-get update
apt-get install perl libc6 dpkg apt apt-utils debconf
apt-get dist-upgrade
This will upgrade a few more packages, but not many, because the system as a whole remains tiny.
Now, change /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Debian-unstable trees. Again:
apt-get update
apt-get install perl libc6 dpkg apt apt-utils debconf
apt-get dist-upgrade
You now have a barebones Debian-unstable system, with minimal likelihood of problems getting there, and can now build up as desired.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
